


where we belong

by nickelsandcoats



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Girlfriends/No Wives, Fluff, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Tooth Rotting Fluff, so much love between these boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:40:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24360715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nickelsandcoats/pseuds/nickelsandcoats
Summary: The rocks have always held a special place in Rhett and Link's lives, and going back to see them while filming the Buies Creek documentary leads to more than just a trip down memory lane.
Relationships: Rhett McLaughlin/Link Neal
Comments: 10
Kudos: 43
Collections: Good Mythical Self-Isolation





	where we belong

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the "a quiet moment alone during the filming of the Buies Creek docu-series" prompt for the Good Mythical Self-Isolation challenge.

Rhett had been a bit twitchy while they were waiting for the crew to pack up the equipment and head back to the van. He’d pulled Stevie aside while Link was kicking some dirt up around the big rock, only stopping to put his hands on his slim hips and stare up into the canopy, the sunlight dappling his face. Rhett’s throat went dry staring at him, struck by how _right_ Link looked standing there, sweat dripping down his neck, eyes bright with the sun and the memories they’d stirred up by being here.

“Stevie,” Rhett said quietly, dropping her elbow once they were out of earshot. “Could you and the crew get the stuff back to the van by yourselves?”

Stevie gave him an appraising look, the one that always pierced through everything he wasn’t saying. She nodded once, pulling her hat down a bit further on her brow. “How long do you need?”

“Not really sure,” Rhett shrugged. “If I haven’t texted you in an hour, just go ahead and head back to the hotel. We’ll catch an Uber back.”

Stevie nodded again, and then flashed a bright grin at him. “Take your time,” she said, squeezing his arm gently. “You both look so happy here--stay as long as you want. Just let me know when you get back, if we don’t see you in an hour.”

Rhett smiled back at her, giving her a gentle nudge before she trotted back down to gather the crew up and head back. She shooed Link away to go sit on the big rock again as Rhett ambled back down and drew up next to him. With Link on the rock, they were nearly the same height, and Rhett took advantage of it to drape an arm over his shoulders and lean in to give him a brief kiss on the cheek.

“Stevie said you wanted to stay for a bit,” Link murmured as he watched Ben and Casey stow the camera cases in the small cart. He turned his head to look at Rhett, pushing his glasses back up on his nose.

“I did. Just thought it’d be nice to be here, just the two of us.” 

Link smiled at him, the small shy smile that Rhett loved so. “I’m glad you thought of it. Wasn’t looking forward to leaving since it took us so many years to come back here. Wanted to sit here a bit longer.” He leaned into Rhett’s side, draping his own arm around Rhett’s middle, pulling him in as tight as he could. 

They waved the crew off, and then they were alone, standing next to their rocks, feeling the weight of their history pressing in around them. 

“It’s so weird to be here, man,” Link said as he paced a small circle around the two rocks, nervous energy evident in the way his hand kept raking its way through his hair. “It’s been so long--why haven’t we ever come back before now?”

He turned to look at Rhett, who had taken up a seat on the little rock, legs crossed out in front of him. Rhett looked a bit pensive, but he glanced up and smiled at Link, catching at his shirt when Link passed next to him on one of his circuits.

“Have a seat, bo. Talk to me?”

Link stopped moving and climbed up onto the big rock, crossing his legs and drumming his hands nervously on his knees. “I…” he started, sighed, drummed his fingers some more. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“You could start by telling me why you’re so nervous?” Rhett said carefully.

“I’m just thinking back to the last time we were here together. It had to have been right before we left for college, yeah? Sometime that summer?”

Rhett nodded.

“And I remember sitting out here with you, looking around at all of this--” he swung his arms in a wide arc--”and thinking to myself, what if we never come back here? What if we went to college and grew apart and never did all that we had sat here and planned to do? It sounds so stupid now, but back then--I was always so scared that it would be a possibility.”

Rhett looked down at the ground, remembering what Link had just said before, when the crew was still here and they were filming. How his voice had gone soft and he had pulled into himself, looking more vulnerable than he had in years, talking about how scared he was to even breathe the suggestion that they go to film school together, that Rhett ignore what his father wanted and jump into the unknown together. “It never would have been a possibility,” Rhett told him firmly. “Never. I would rather have chopped off my arm than leave you behind. Surely you know that?”

Link bit his lip and nodded. “I think I’ve always known, deep down, that you and I would never be apart, but...that little voice was harder to ignore back then.”

“We turned out fine, didn’t we?”

That brought a smile to Link’s face. “More than fine.” He let the silence unspool a bit, before he stretched his arms up over his head and jumped down off the rock. “Your turn,” he said, leaning down to give Rhett a smacking kiss on the forehead. 

Rhett had been staring off into the middle distance, eyes unfocused, and Link’s kiss made him startle. “Actually,” Rhett grinned, “I remembered something.” He hopped up and dug the trowel out of his backpack, the trowel he had borrowed from his bemused mother the day before.

Link looked at him, skepticism telegraphed in every line of his body as he watched Rhett stand next to the big rock and take five large steps away from it. Rhett tapped his foot over one unremarkable spot, then crouched down and started to dig down into the soil, face lighting up in triumph when the trowel made a dull thump. “Found it!” he cried, digging faster to reveal a small metal box wrapped tightly in plastic. Link hurried over, helping uncover the box. 

“What is it?” Link asked as Rhett reached down and pulled out the box, blowing dirt off the top and unwrapping the plastic.

Rhett grinned at him. “A time capsule.” He sat the box on top of the big rock, prying the latch open. “I made it.”

“You made a time capsule? When? What’s in it?” He craned his neck trying to peer into the box, but Rhett stepped in front of him, blocking his view. 

“I made it the summer before we left for college. I just hope everything’s still intact in here.” He reached in and pulled out a plastic bag with two dried boutonnieres in it, and handed it to Link.

“Are those the ones from senior prom?” Link asked, laughing as he gently turned the bag in his hand, looking at the brown tipped cream colored roses.

“Yep,” Rhett confirmed, handing over another bag, this one with a handful of Polaroids in it. Link carefully sat the bag aside to look through later, and took the next bag, this one full of sheets of paper. 

Link squinted at the top sheet of paper, skimming the first few lines of Rhett’s scrawled notes before he gasped. “This is your copy of our screenplay! I wondered where your copy had ended up--you were the one with all the script notes. You said you’d lost it.” He shot Rhett a mock glare as he carefully unsealed the bag and drew out the slim stack of paper, flipping through the pages and smiling at Rhett’s annotations to their (terrible) script.

Rhett smirked at him and dug into the box again, coming up this time with a cassette tape carefully sealed in another plastic bag. He turned it over in his hands, blushing a bit as he handed it over. “This was a mixtape I was too afraid to give you.”

“Really? Why?”

“It’s a bit….It showed my hand a bit too obviously, and I didn’t know how you would take a mixtape that was made of songs that all but screamed ‘I’m in love with you’ and ‘don’t leave me behind’ when we were eighteen.”

Link’s eyes softened and he stood up on his toes to kiss Rhett’s cheek and nuzzle into his neck a bit. “I think my eighteen-year-old self would have been scared shitless to get it, but would have been delighted after listening to it to know that I wasn’t the only one hopelessly in love with my best friend.”

“We wasted so much time,” Rhett said softly, pressing a kiss into Link’s hair, rubbing one large hand up and down his back. 

“We did things exactly how they needed to be done, even if we didn’t know that at the time. We ended up where we were meant to be, even if it wasn’t as soon as we would have liked. No moment with you was ever a waste.”

Rhett stood there for another moment, lips still buried in Link’s hair, feeling the smaller man breathe gently as he stood tucked against his side. Finally, he pulled away a little bit, knowing there was only one more thing in the box, and he wanted a moment to compose himself before he pulled it out. “Why don’t you go have a seat and look through those photos? I don’t even remember what I put in there.” 

Link leaned up and kissed his cheek again before taking the bag of photos over to the little rock and leafing through them, laughing as he described each one to Rhett, flashing each one at him before moving on to the next in the stack. When he reached the last photo, one of him standing in the river, looking over his shoulder at Rhett, he paused for a moment, running a gentle finger down the edge of the Polaroid, transfixed by the love he could see in his eyes, even back then.

Rhett cleared his throat, making Link startle a bit. “I always loved that one,” Rhett said softly, “I had them make doubles of that roll of film. I have the other one at home somewhere.” Link smiled up at him, then looked back down at the photo. He traced the edge one more time before neatly slipping the photos back into the plastic bag. Rhett waited until he had sealed the bag shut and set it carefully on the ground next to the small rock. “Close your eyes,” Rhett whispered, “and hold out your hands.”

Link complied, and Rhett carefully laid a piece of paper, softened from years stored folded in his wallet, then safely in his desk drawer at home before he’d slid it into a plastic bag and sealed it up in his time capsule, into Link’s palms. “Open your eyes,” Rhett said, voice husky with barely suppressed tears.

Opening first one eye, then the other, Link’s jaw dropped as he saw what he was holding.

 _I, Rhett James McLaughlin, and I, Charles Lincoln Neal, III, swear to create something big together_ , signed with their names in rust colored blood.

“Oh my God,” Link breathed. “You still had it--after all this time?”

“I did,” Rhett replied, fidgeting with his hands a bit, crumpling the bag the oath had been in.

Link pulled it close to his chest, staring down in disbelief that such a vital part of their story was still intact. Distracted, he traced the letters of his name, smiling a bit as he remembered the feeling of writing his name, sealing his vow to the man standing in front of him. While he was distracted, Rhett reached into his pocket and pulled out a small box, curling his palm around the soft velvet. He cleared his throat, and Link looked up at him, taking the bag Rhett offered him and sealing the oath inside it, setting it with the photographs. When he looked back up at Rhett, he realized that Rhett was about to cry, and Link started to stand, reaching out for him. Rhett just shook his head, and Link subsided for a moment, wringing his hands instead. “Rhett? What is it?”

Rhett looked down at him, eyes red and welling up, and cleared his throat again, shaking his head. “I--” he stopped, swallowed, “I--” 

Link’s eyes were wide with fright, and Rhett could tell if he didn’t act quickly, he’d never regain his nerve, so he swallowed again, and looked Link in the eye as he slowly lowered himself down to one knee. Link gasped, eyes wide and so, so blue in the dappled sunlight.

“It felt right to say this here,” Rhett started, swallowing thickly, feeling the tears fill his eyes, opening his hand to reveal the small box and reaching out to comfort Link with the other. 

Link was crying openly, one hand pressed tightly to his mouth, the other gripping Rhett’s free hand so tightly that he was sure to leave bruises. “Oh, God, Rhett--”

Rhett quirked a little smile, squeezing back just as tightly. “This is where we let our love grow, where we talked about what _we_ were, what we could become. Where we cried, laughed, dreamed, and loved. Where you and I became _us_. Where we swore to create something big together, to never be apart. I want to make another vow to you, here, now. I swear I will love you until the last breath leaves my body, and beyond. I will always support your dreams, and help you dream as big as you want. I will never leave you behind, never leave you wanting for anything. I will stand beside you through all of our highs and our lows, and share in your grief and your joy. I will love you with every last atom of my being, with all of my heart and soul, always and forever.”

Both of them were openly weeping, as Link finally took his hand away from his mouth and clutched at Rhett’s hand with both of his shaky hands, smiling so wide he thought his cheeks would split.

Rhett swallowed hard once, twice. “Will you...Link, will you…” He swallowed again, whispering, afraid to shatter the hallowed silence that had settled over the little clearing. “Will you marry me?”

“Yes! God, yes, Rhett, a thousand, a million times yes. Yes yes yes I will.” He launched himself at Rhett, falling into his arms and knocking Rhett back to sit on his with a huff of giddy laughter. 

Rhett clutched him close, folding his arms around his fiance ( _his fiance!_ ), clinging on to him and pouring all of his soul into the deepest kiss they had ever shared. He could taste their tears mingling as Link’s arms dragged him in even closer, locking his legs around Rhett, one hand running up to catch in his curls. They broke apart, leaning their foreheads together, breathing the same air. Rhett finally leaned back enough to look Link in the eye, blushing fiercely as he brought the small black box back in front of him. Link laughed, brushing his arm against his eyes in a vain effort to stop the occasional tears that still fell down his face. 

“Is it bad I almost forgot about the ring?” Link asked, huffing out a small laugh.

Laughing, Rhett cracked open the small black box, revealing a simple gold band. He plucked it out of the box, and took Link’s left hand, ignoring how it was trembling. He slipped the ring down Link’s ring finger, giving his hand a gentle squeeze once the ring had slid into place. “I’d hoped this would serve a dual purpose,” Rhett said as he glanced up to see Link’s eyes locked on to the unfamiliar sight of a ring on his finger. “It’s...it’s your grandpa Clyde’s.”

Link’s gaze snapped up and ensnared Rhett in its intensity. Link’s eyes started to water again as he whispered, “Did Mom give you this?”

“She did. I called her a few weeks ago and asked if there were any heirloom rings in your family, and she got real quiet for a minute before she told me she had his ring and had been waiting for me to call and ask her for it for years now. We both cried a little when she gave it to me at lunch yesterday. She said she’d hoped you’d wear it as your wedding ring, and I do, too. If you want something different for your wedding ring, of course we can go and look--”

Link leaned in and kissed him sweetly, cutting off his ramble. “It’s perfect and I wouldn’t dream of having anything else.” He started peppering Rhett’s face with kisses, lingering every once in a while on his lips, until Rhett finally captured his mouth and deepened the kiss, turning it into a fiery, passionate one. When they finally broke apart, both men were breathing heavily, running their hands over each other’s backs and sides, enjoying the silence and warm sun. 

After several long minutes, Rhett sighed a bit, and pressed a gentle kiss to Link’s forehead. “We should start heading back before it gets dark,” Rhett said, and gently nudged Link to get him to stand back up. Link stood and helped Rhett stand, pulling him into another kiss as soon as the taller man had regained his feet. Together, they gathered up the contents of the time capsule, reverently putting each piece back into the small box. Link lingered for a moment, running his thumb over their childish writing on their blood oath. He placed it back into the box, and as he closed the lid, the light glinting off his new ring caught his eye and made him grin like a fool. He picked up the box and turned back to face Rhett, who had finished checking the little clearing to make sure nothing had been left behind. Suddenly, something clicked in Link’s brain and he blurted out, “Did you get yourself one?”

Rhett cocked his head, confusion pinching his eyebrows together for a moment, before he caught on. “No, I didn’t. It felt a bit presumptuous, I guess.” He ducked his head, blushing a bit as he looked through his lashes at Link, who was smiling gently.

“We’ll have to go together. I can’t wait to see what you choose.”

“Maybe white gold? To go with the silver in your hair. Just like yours is gold like mine.”

Link nodded, grinning up at Rhett, as he picked up the box and tucked it under his arm, holding out his hand to Rhett, who took it and immediately interlaced their fingers. They paused, taking one last, long look at the rocks, at this place that seen them through so many of the most important moments of their lives. 

They turned as one and walked out of the clearing, heading into their future, together.

**Author's Note:**

> Come visit me on my [Tumblr](https://nickelsandcoats.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
